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$22.00
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That Hair written by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida and translated by Eric M. B. Becker.
A Best Translation of the Year at World Literature Today
Finalist for the 2021 PEN Translation Prize
That Hair consists of universal subjects of racism, feminism, colonialism, immigration, identity and memory.
"The story of my curly hair," says Mila, the narrator of Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida's autobiographically inspired tragicomedy, "intersects with the story of at least two countries and, by extension, the underlying story of the relations among several continents: a geopolitics." Mila is the Luanda-born daughter of a black Angolan mother and a white Portuguese father.
She arrives in Lisbon at the tender age of three, and feels like an outsider from the jump. Through the lens of young Mila's indomitably curly hair, her story interweaves memories of childhood and adolescence, family lore spanning four generations, and present-day reflections on the internal and external tensions of a European and African identity.
In layered and luscious prose, That Hair enriches and deepens a global conversation, challenging in necessary ways our understanding of racism, feminism, and the double inheritance of colonialism, not yet fifty years removed from Angola's independence. It's the story of coming of age as a black woman in a nation at the edge of Europe that is also rapidly changing, of being considered an outsider in one's own country, and the impossibility of"returning" to a homeland one doesn't in fact know.
Author
Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida was born in Luanda, Angola, and grew up in Lisbon. She has a PhD in literary theory from the University of Lisbon. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta.com, Words Without Borders, Granta Portugal, Observador, Somos Libros, Ler, serrote, and 451.
Translator
Eric M. B. Becker is a literary translator, critic, writer, and editor of Words without Borders. He is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright, PEN America, and the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
Becker has translated work by Mia Couto, Paulo Coelho, Lygia Fagundes Telles, Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, and Daniel Galera, among others. His work has been published in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Freeman's, Electric Literature, and many other publications. He is editor of several anthologies and magazine features devoted to the literature of Brazil.
Language English
Print length 200 pages
Item weight 159g
Dimensions 12.85 × 1.07 × 19.84 cm